Grinnell, Minturn & Co. was one of the leading transatlantic shipping companies in the middle 19th century. It is probably best known today as being the owner and operator of the Flying Cloud , arguably the greatest of the clipper ships.
The company was founded ca. 1815 as Fish, Grinnell & Co. (the senior partner of which had the memorable, if improbable, name of Preserved Fish (1766–1846)); the Grinnell was his cousin Joseph Grinnell, one of six sons of a shipper and merchant in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Joseph Grinnell's two younger brothers, Henry (1800–1874) and Moses (1803–1877), became members of the firm in 1825, and in 1828 Joseph retired. In ca. 1830, Robert Bowne Minturn (1805–1866), a member of a family long prominent in New England and New York shipping circles, joined the firm (his sister Sarah had married Henry Grinnell in 1822) and it became Grinnell, Minturn & Co., or simply Grinnell & Minturn, a conglomerate of merchant and sailing magnates with New England Quaker roots. The company stayed "in the family" and remained active until 1880. [1] [2]
Partners Robert B. Minturn, Franklin H. Delano, Moses H. Grinnell and brother Henry Grinnell were among the wealthiest of the merchant-kings of New York in their day, who built one of 19th century America's largest transportation empires in the Golden Age of Sail with a one-time fleet of more than fifty ships that sailed to every continent. [3] In 1845, before the height of the emigrant trade from which the firm was profiting, Minturn was reported to be worth $200,000; today's equivalent of more than $2.251 billion in relative output. The Grinnells were worth $250,000, each, or nearly $5.8 billion combined; and partner Delano, who had married into the Astor family, was valued at what would be worth $5.76 billion today. [4] [5]
Fellow shipping magnate A.A. Low wrote sarcastically about the two principals, Moses and Robert, in a letter to a sibling: “Our friends, Grinnell, Minturn are heartbroken about the famine (in Ireland, 1845-1852, causing a million deaths and two million to emigrate, many on ships they owned). They have a house dinner to celebrate the fortune it is bringing them, and dine on terrapin, salmon, peas, asparagus, strawberries—all out of season, of course—then Mr. Grinnell gives the famine fund $360, which he had lost on a bet with Mr. Wetmore (William S. Wetmore, founder of rival China trade firm Wetmore & Company.)” [6]
Minturn served as vice president on the relief committee that eventually sent the Macedonian, June 19, 1847, with supplies to Ireland, and was a Commissioner of Emigration and a founder of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. [7] Minturn reportedly once noted that the $5 million spent on ship fares in 1847, "substantially reduced the cost of carrying freight," and helped the economy by lowering the price of American cotton and grain for English buyers. According to the website, An Irish Passenger, An American Family, And Their Time, profit, "rather than humanitarian impulses" drove immigration, "and because government regulatory agencies and private philanthropies were unwilling or unable to exert much control over that business, 19th century emigrants were often literally treated as human freight." [8]
The company's first major endeavor was its Liverpool Line, known as the Blue Swallowtail Line (1822–1880) from its distinctive blue and white swallowtailed house flag. This enterprise was originally started by Fish, Grinnell and Co. in cooperation with Thaddeus Phelps and was called the "Fourth Line of Liverpool Packets." The Blue Swallowtail line originally sailed monthly and, like the other Liverpool-New York packet lines, did a thriving business in the wave of Irish immigration in the wake of an Gorta Mor. [9] Its ships included the New World (built 1846, and reported to be the largest merchant ship in the world at the time), [10] Queen of the West, Henry Clay, Ashburton, Patrick Henry , Roscoe, American Union, and Albert Gallatin. In 1851, the line expanded to eight regular packets sailing from Liverpool on the 6th and 21st of each month. In 1854, management divided between Cornelius Grinnell, who took over four ships, and the firm, which operated five ships, as before. The firm added nine more vessels before 1860, including the Packet Aurora (built 1854, 1,639 tons), with three decks and room for 1,000 passengers. [11] This included the massive Ontario (built in 1855 at 1,501 tons burthen), which ran aground off of Holgate, Long Beach Island, New Jersey in 1876. [12]
The company entered the New York-London market a year later with its London (Red Swallowtail) Line, which also endured until 1880. The flag was the same as for the Liverpool line, but with red at the hoist instead of blue. The ships included the Columbia, Sir Robert Peel (built 1846), Patrick Henry (after her 1852 transfer from the Blue Swallowtail line), Prince Albert, Yorktown (1847), London (1848), and Rhine. Many of these ships were actually owned by the partners (in shares) individually, and not owned by the company itself.
As its business grew, the company's reputation expanded, even to Canada. In 1835, the Quebec Mercury commented on "[T]he exertions of Messrs. Grinnell, Minturn & Co. . . . to increase the efficiency of the London line" and called for "every encouragement on the part of those of our community who are in the habit of frequently crossing the Atlantic." [13]
Later, when the discovery of gold in the Sierra Nevada made California a popular destination for travelers from the East Coast, the company founded a California Line of clippers. The demands of the voyage were such that larger ships were required, and the Flying Cloud (built 1851) was purchased for this route for the phenomenal sum of $90,000 before the ship was even launched. [14] The ship set a record for the New York-to-San Francisco run around Cape Horn in 1851 (despite losing a portion of a mast en route), and improved on its own mark in 1853, setting a record for ships under sail that lasted for over 100 years. The Flying Cloud, like many of the line's ships, had individual ownership. Moses H. Grinnell and Robert Minturn each held 9/32 shares. Henry Grinnell, John E. Williams, and Francis S. Hathaway each held 4/32 shares. Captain Creesy held 2/32 shares. [15]
Because of its extensive shipping operations, the company (and the Minturn family) was involved in a number of landmark legal cases having to do with ships and shipping, including Minturn v. United States [16] and Lawrence v. Minturn. [17] Another of these cases described the company as "Grinnell, Minturn & Co., large shipping merchants of New York". [18]
Robert Minturn's first cousin, Edward Minturn, partnered with Albert Woodhull, to form Minturn & Woodhull, merchants, in the 1830s. In 1841, the firm launched Woodhull & Minturn's "New Line" of packet ships between New York and Liverpool, for a time headquartered at 87 South Street, New York, which eventually held twelve vessels. "Between 1842 and 1847, inclusive, twenty-nine new Western Ocean lines were formed," according to Queens of the Western Ocean: The Story of America's Mail and Passenger Sailing Lines. The firm's ships included the Hottinguer (1843, 993 tons), Captain Ira Bursley; Queen of the West (1844, 1,161 tons), Captain Woodhouse; Liverpool (1843, 1,077 tons), Captain John Eldridge; the Constitution (1846 by Brown & Bell, 1,327 tons), Captain John Britton. In 1845, they opened a line to Glasgow, Scotland. They sold their holdings to Grinnell, Minturn & Co. in about 1847. On January 12, 1850, the Hottinguer hit a bank off of Wexford, Ireland, near Tuskar Light, and was stranded. Capt. Bursley saved passengers but died, with twelve crew, after a failed rescue attempt.
The Grinnells partnered with John Bowman to form Bowman, Grinnell & Co., agents, which advertised remittance and baggage services, and as "the only authorized passenger agents for the SWALLOW-TAIL LINE OF PACKET SHIPS," with offices through the 1850s, in Liverpool, 5 Regent Road across from the Clarence dock gate, and Fenwick Chambers; in Cork, Ireland, 15 Merchants Quay; and in New York, 83 South Street.
In 1848, Grinnell, Minturn & Co. partner Robert Minturn provided evidence before Parliament that teetotalism was encouraged by American shipowners as underwriters offered "a return of 10% off the premium on voyages performed without the consumption of spirits." [19]
Minturn died in 1866; Grinnell died in 1877. Minturn's sons, Robert Bowne Minturn, Jr., and John Wendell Minturn, became principals. The firm ostensibly closed down a majority of its packet services by 1880. The following year, John Minturn, second born son of Robert B. Minturn, aged 42, committed suicide at its New York headquarters at 78 South Street (1881). [20]
The first name of Preserved Fish was properly pronounced with three syllables, and was a reference to being "preserved from sin" or "preserved in grace"; his family, prominent in New York, also gave rise to Hamilton Fish, governor, senator, and secretary of state.
Robert B. Minturn is an ancestor of Edie Sedgwick.
Robert B. Minturn, Jr. (born February 21, 1836) was also vice president of the railroad that founded the town of Minturn, Colorado, giving his name to that town.
Flying Cloud was a clipper ship that set the world's sailing record for the fastest passage between New York and San Francisco, 89 days 8 hours. The ship held this record for over 130 years, from 1854 to 1989.
Captain Robert Bennet Forbes, was an American sea captain, China merchant and ship owner. He was active in ship construction, maritime safety, the opium trade, and charitable activities, including food aid to Ireland, which became known as America's first major disaster relief effort.
Donald McKay was a Canadian-born American designer and builder of sailing ships, famed for his record-setting extreme clippers.
Henry Walton Grinnell, known as Walton Grinnell, was a naval veteran of the American Civil War and the Spanish–American War. He became a rear admiral and Inspector-General in the Imperial Japanese Navy and served at the battle of the Yalu River in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95. He was discharged as an admiral at the end of the war.
The Inman Line was one of the three largest 19th-century British passenger shipping companies on the North Atlantic, along with the White Star Line and Cunard Line. Founded in 1850, it was absorbed in 1893 into American Line. The firm's formal name for much of its history was the Liverpool, Philadelphia and New York Steamship Company, but it was also variously known as the Liverpool and Philadelphia Steamship Company, as Inman Steamship Company, Limited, and, in the last few years before absorption, as the Inman and International Steamship Company.
Moses Hicks Grinnell was a United States Congressman representing New York, and a Commissioner of New York City's Central Park.
James Baines & Co. of Liverpool was a British shipping company, most famous for the Liverpool Black Ball Line of Australian Packets, a fleet of packet ships running cargo and passenger services between Liverpool, England, and Australia in the second half of the 1800s. It also traded in India and Crimea.
James Baines was a passenger clipper ship completely constructed of timber in the 1850s and launched on 25 July 1854 from the East Boston shipyard of the famous ship builder Donald McKay in the United States for the Black Ball Line of James Baines & Co., Liverpool. The clipper was one of the few known larger sailing ships rigged with a moonsail.
The Black Ball Line was a passenger line founded by a group of New York Quaker merchants headed by Jeremiah Thompson, and included Isaac Wright & Son (William), Francis Thompson and Benjamin Marshall. All were Quakers except Marshall.
Henry Grinnell was an American merchant and philanthropist.
Robert Bowne Minturn was one of the most prominent American merchants and shippers of the mid-19th century. Today, he is probably best known as being one of the owners of the famous clipper ship, Flying Cloud.
Robert Bowne Minturn Jr. was an American shipping magnate of the mid to late 19th century.
Stephen Whitney was a passenger-carrying sailing ship which was wrecked on West Calf Island off the southern coast of Ireland on 10 November 1847 with the loss of 92 of the 110 passengers and crew aboard. She was a packet ship in Robert Kermit's Red Star Line. The ship was named after a Kermit investor, New York merchant Stephen Whitney.
William Henry Aspinwall was a prominent American businessman who was a partner in the merchant firm of Howland & Aspinwall and was a co-founder of both the Pacific Mail Steamship Company and Panama Canal Railway companies which revolutionized the migration of goods and people to the Western coast of the United States.
Packet boats were medium-sized boats designed for domestic mail, passenger, and freight transportation in European countries and in North American rivers and canals, some of them steam driven. They were used extensively during the 18th and 19th centuries and featured regularly scheduled service. Steam driven packets were used extensively in the United States in the 19th century on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, supplying and bringing personnel to forts and trading posts.
The West Point was a full rigged vessel built in the 1840s and used for the transportation of goods, passengers and mail to and from Liverpool and New York. It was one of a few ocean-going packet-ships operated by the Robert Kermit Red Star Line company, not to be confused with the Belgian/US-American shipping company Red Star Line, whose main ports of call were New York City and Philadelphia in the United States and Antwerp in Belgium.
In 1818 the Red Star Line was founded by Byrnes, Trimble & Co. from New York.. On September 11, 1835 the line was bought by Robert Kermit from New York, a ship-owner and agent for packet ships, and was renamed Robert Kermits Red Star Line. In 1851 Robert Kermit took his brother-in-law Charles Carow into partnership as Kermit & Carow to carry on the business of general ship owning, commission and commercial trading. Robert Kermit died in 1855 and Carow assumed the business. In 1867 the Red Star Line went down.
The sailing ship Andrew Jackson, a 1,679-registered-ton medium clipper, was built by the firm of Irons & Grinnell in Mystic, Connecticut in 1855. The vessel was designed for the shipping firm of J.H. Brower & Co. to carry cargo intended for sale to participants in the California Gold Rush.
The Patrick Henry (packet) was a three-masted, square-rigged, merchant-class, sailing packet ship that transported mail, newspapers, merchandise and thousands of people from 1839 to 1864, during the Golden Age of Sail, primarily between Liverpool and New York City, as well as produce, grains and clothing to aid in humanitarian efforts during an Gorta Mór.
The Blossom was a 19th-century Sandy Hook pilot boat built for the New York pilots around 1837. She helped transport maritime pilots between inbound or outbound ships coming into the New York Harbor. In 1839, she came across the Slave ship La Amistad. In 1840, there were only eight New York pilot boats, the Blossom being No. 5. Pilot Thomas Freeborn of the Blossom boarded the packet ship John Minturn and tried to guide the ship in bad weather. He was one of thirty-eight passengers that died near the Jersey Shore in 1846.